The accommodation of physically challenged persons in public facilities has been well-advanced by legislation and societal pressure. Enablement of access and ready use of buildings, restaurants, theaters, and rest rooms are observable everywhere, as is the removal of barriers such as ledges, curbs and the provision of ramps and elevators.
The key to all of this is the visibility of the problem and the sympathetic understanding of others who do not share the disability. As a consequence of cooperation between these groups, these particular matters have been immeasurably improved.
There remain, unsolved and unseen, many problems frequently experienced by many physically challenged persons which, precisely because they are unseen, and because their events are less frequent, have not received societal attention and correction. In fact, their existence is not brought to anyone's attention, such as by placards informing persons that a ready means for evacuation by physically challenged persons is not available. Because of their unobtrusive nature (to others) they are unlikely to, and it becomes the function of individuals such as inventors and interested companies to devise means which can at least reduce risk and facilitate the movement and safety of physically challenged persons who find themselves in stressful or dangerous situations.
For example, physically challenged persons who have no control over or sufficient strength in their legs, thereby lacking self-locomotion, must rely on supports such as wheel chairs for routine movement. So long as they are safely in the chair and the chair is in safe circumstances, there is no problem.
But what if the person in that chair is on an upper floor in a tall building, the building is on fire, or there is an earthquake or terrorist event, and the elevators cannot be used? The wheel chair then is worse than useless. There is no means for the person to use the chair to escape, and the task of being carried either in it, or separately from it is often impossible because there is no ready means to engage and carry the chair or person, even if there are people right there who are willing to do so if they had the physical capability for the task. Persons who are physically sufficient for this task are few, and it cannot be assumed that any of them will necessarily be present when they are needed.
A physically challenged person inherently worries when he or she goes above the first floor of a building. The assurance of access provided by law and by way of friendly inclination provide for access, but not for quick evacuation from very dangerous buildings, such as one on fire. One means to alleviate this concern is to provide a device according to this invention which is economically affordable, and which can be kept in an office or apartment without taking up much room. An office can readily afford to have a few of these devices on its shelf, and these devices enable reasonably fit people to carry the person out of harm's way. In fact, in some of its alignments only one person is needed, and the person carrying can have a free hand to hold a side rail.
While the term “physically challenged” as used this far relates primarily to persons with nearly total loss of locomotion, there are many others where this invention is useful. Persons who use walkers, persons with Alzheimers, and pregnant women, are unable rapidly to descend steep stairways. They suffer from the same needs as those more challenged, and have the same concerns.
There is yet another example of a use of one of the alignments of this invention—the carrying from harm's way of an injured soldier by two of his fellows. Very often both hands of the two men carrying the injured person are fully involved with carrying the wounded, such as by the “cross arm” carry of two men whose arms there by form a cradle. This makes the three of them a target without defensive capacity. In one alignment of this device, each of the two men carrying the wounded will have a free hand with which he can shoot, however inaccurately, and the wounded might also be able to fire a weapon. However inaccurate their aim might be, they will still be able to keep some hostile heads down.
The above may reasonably be regarded as ultimate problems. With respect to their seriousness, as extremes they overlook more usual and less dramatic, but still disturbing situations. These other situations lack only the ultimate risk of immediate death. Still, to a person exposed to them, or who is reasonably fearful of them, the anticipation of perils, injury and delay of succor are troubling in the extreme. A challenged person in a hotel room who hears the fire alarm ring is panicked, even if the alarm is a false one, as so often happens. The knowledge that a convenient means to affect his or her evacuation is at hand is very quieting even when there is no alarm. The person will have brought the device with him.
The perils attending the fall of a physically challenged person are discussed in applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 6,532,610, which issued Mar. 18, 2003. This patent particularly addresses the problem of raising a person who has fallen to the floor and does not have the ability to raise himself or herself. It also considers the problem of lifting and conveying the raised person to a different location.
The principal problem addressed in the said patent is the avoidance of injury to the person being raised, and also to the persons raising him or her. A frail, fallen person often is injured by the most careful paramedic who must hold him or her while lifting the person. Broken ribs are a frequent complication.
In addition, and especially in residences for the elderly, very high workers compensation insurance rates reflect the potential for damage to the backs of attendants who attempt to lift the person. As a consequence, there is a frequent refusal by these people to raise the person. Instead they leave the person in place and await the arrival of paramedics to lift the person. Their back is saved, and their employer's insurance is spared, but the fallen person still suffers. This situation also pertains in senior care homes, nursing homes, and to senior caregivers in private residences.
This invention is not intended to be a solution to the above problems, although it can be so used. Instead, it is principally directed toward the safe and expedient conveyance of a physically challenged person already prepared for movement, away from a place of peril or disadvantage, or even to a better and more enjoyable place to be.
This does not always means such ultimate events as fleeing from a fire. There are often less baleful events, but of serious mien. The most benign may be the safe transport of a person from a car or wheel chair up or down a long set of stairs while there is not active emergency or even from a chair to a bed, or reverse. Another may be the carriage of an injured fisherman away from his place of injury.
As to this latter situation, persons who fish in distant streams often hike several miles to a good stream from a drop-off location. Then while in the stream they slip on the rocks and sprain an ankle or break a leg. The task is now to get them back to the drop-off location.
Sometimes they can hobble back. Other times they must rely on their companions to carry them, or wait for a crew to come for them. Except for his accident, he is not disabled in the sense of a person with a spinal injury but he is definitely physically challenged. In short, this invention provides for the safe transport of a person who, without it, must either perish in place, or somehow crawl to help.
This same situation pertains to hikers and back packers as well as to fisherman. They often are 12 to 20 miles from succor.
Similarly, a wounded or otherwise injured person can be carried expeditiously.
Persons who have had little or no experience with moving physically challenged persons will have difficulty recognizing the comparative effort needed to lift the person as compared to moving them sidewardly or lowering them. When a person is already elevated, it takes much less effort to keep them that high, or to lower them, but much more effort to raise them. This invention overcomes much of the stress in lifting a person, and provides greater stability while lowering the person.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a carrier which can be left under the person on top of or beneath a seat cushion where it will be available when the time comes to move the person. At that time it can be quickly erected and the person moved.
It is the object of this invention to provide a convenient, portable device that can be assembled to a person, which provides apparatus employable by others to raise and move the person, either by hand or by suspension from the torso of the care-giver. It also provides a wide range of alignments to facilitate various modes and circumstances of carrying a person.